Transnational injustice symbols and communities: The case of al-Qaeda and the Guantanamo Bay detention camp

2011 ◽  
Vol 59 (6) ◽  
pp. 717-734 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Olesen

The article identifies a political-cultural deficit in the expansive literature of the last 10–15 years on transnational activist communication. To illustrate the utility of a political-cultural sociological approach the article discusses how contemporary jihadist activists, and especially al-Qaeda, have actively transformed the Guantanamo Bay detention camp set up by the United States following the attacks of 9/11 into a transnational injustice symbol. Transnational injustice symbols are events and situations (both past and present) constructed and employed by political actors to condense and perform perceived injustices before geographically, socially and culturally dispersed audiences. Guantanamo Bay and other injustice symbols such as Palestine, Abu Ghraib and the Muhammad cartoons published in Denmark in 2005 are key elements in the creation of a transnational jihadist injustice community.

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 3-10
Author(s):  
Rachel E. Barkow

This essay explores how the role of the United States Sentencing Commission has changed over time. It has gone through three different phases in terms of its role (either actual or perceived) in federal sentencing. The first phase covers the Commission at its inception, and the perceived role of the Commission that dominated then was that of a politically insulated, expert agency that would serve, essentially, as an independent policy maker. This vision of the Commission never materialized, but it is important to understand this model in order to appreciate why the Commission was set up the way it was. During the second and dominant phase, which lasted for roughly two decades, from 1986 until 2007, the Commission played a weak supporting role to the political actors who oversaw its work, with Congress largely controlling its output. This period was characterized by political battering by Congress. Given the political climate of the time, that meant increases in sentences, but little else, from the Commission. The third phase began in 2007 and continues today. The Commission is now seen as a respected supplier of data, and its judgments are given more deference. In a sense, this role combines the first two. The Commission is recognized for its expertise, but that expertise is valuable only insofar as the information it generates has political value. The essay concludes with ways the Commission’s design can be improved to give it greater political influence in setting sentencing policy.


Public Voices ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 115
Author(s):  
Mary Coleman

The author of this article argues that the two-decades-long litigation struggle was necessary to push the political actors in Mississippi into a more virtuous than vicious legal/political negotiation. The second and related argument, however, is that neither the 1992 United States Supreme Court decision in Fordice nor the negotiation provided an adequate riposte to plaintiffs’ claims. The author shows that their chief counsel for the first phase of the litigation wanted equality of opportunity for historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), as did the plaintiffs. In the course of explicating the role of a legal grass-roots humanitarian, Coleman suggests lessons learned and trade-offs from that case/negotiation, describing the tradeoffs as part of the political vestiges of legal racism in black public higher education and the need to move HBCUs to a higher level of opportunity at a critical juncture in the life of tuition-dependent colleges and universities in the United States. Throughout the essay the following questions pose themselves: In thinking about the Road to Fordice and to political settlement, would the Justice Department lawyers and the plaintiffs’ lawyers connect at the point of their shared strength? Would the timing of the settlement benefit the plaintiffs and/or the State? Could plaintiffs’ lawyers hold together for the length of the case and move each piece of the case forward in a winning strategy? Who were plaintiffs’ opponents and what was their strategy? With these questions in mind, the author offers an analysis of how the campaign— political/legal arguments and political/legal remedies to remove the vestiges of de jure segregation in higher education—unfolded in Mississippi, with special emphasis on the initiating lawyer in Ayers v. Waller and Fordice, Isaiah Madison


Author(s):  
Gilles Duruflé ◽  
Thomas Hellmann ◽  
Karen Wilson

This chapter examines the challenge for entrepreneurial companies of going beyond the start-up phase and growing into large successful companies. We examine the long-term financing of these so-called scale-up companies, focusing on the United States, Europe, and Canada. The chapter first provides a conceptual framework for understanding the challenges of financing scale-ups. It emphasizes the need for investors with deep pockets, for smart money, for investor networks, and for patient money. It then shows some data about the various aspects of financing scale-ups in the United States, Europe, and Canada, showing how Europe and Canada are lagging behind the US relatively more at the scale-up than the start-up stage. Finally, the chapter raises the question of long-term public policies for supporting the creation of a better scale-up environment.


1947 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 386-387

Established by a Memorandum of Agreement signed by Argentina, Australia, Canada, Great Britain, and the United States in April, 1942, the International Wheat Council was set up as an agency to deal with the allocation of wheat surpluses. During the war it has served as a central organ to administer and coordinate the work of implementing the commitments of member-states to a pool of wheat for the relief of war-stricken and other necessitous areas. It held two sessions in Washington during 1946.


2005 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis Balthazar

This paper's objective is to bring forth some elements which confirm the following hypothesis : Canada is consigned to continentalism, namely to economic and cultural integration with the United States though this fact is shrouded in a Canadian nationalism of sorts. The continentalist mentality is rooted in the history of British North America, inhabited mostly by refugees from America who have remained inherently "Yankees" in spite of their anti-americanism. The Confederation itself is based on a sort of complicity with the United States. More recently there were talks of a "North American nationality", and continentalism both cultural and economic has come to be seen as a 'force of nature" which the governments, at the most, put into a chanelling process. Still, it is possible for Canadian nationalism to exist provided it does not go beyond the threshold whence it would run headlong into the continental mentality. Canada has defined itself through an international or non-national perspective far too long for today's nationalism not to remain weak and poorly established. But the Americans whose "manifest destiny" has succeeded in spreading over Canada without even their having tried to hoist their flag there find it to their advantage to maintain some form of Canadian sovereignty. Canada as a "friendly nation" can be of use to Washington. That is why there are almost as many advocates for Canada's independence in the United States as there are north of the border. Canadian nationalism can thus further the interests of some Canadian elites without seriously prejudicing continental integration which can very well afford not to be set up into formalized structures.


2009 ◽  
Vol 25 (4) ◽  
pp. 333-335
Author(s):  
Carla Pollastrelli

In this testimony, Carla Pollastrelli charts the main stages leading to Grotowski's settlement in Pontedera in Italy and to the creation of the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski. As the Year of Grotowski, supported by UNESCO, draws to a close, her words provide a fitting tribute to a man whose influence has surpassed all geographical boundaries, whether those of his native Poland, adoptive Italy, or place of temporary refuge, the United States. Carla Pollastrelli is the co-director of the Fondazione Pontedera Teatro. Pontedera Teatro. From 1986 to 2000 she was an executive of the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski, which in 1996 was renamed the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards. She has edited translations of Grotowski's texts in Polish into Italian since 1978, and is the co-editor with Ludwig Flaszen of Il Teatr Laboratorium di Jerzy Grotowski, 1959–1969: testi e materiali di Jerzy Grotowski e Ludwik Flaszen con uno scritto di Eugenio Barba (Jerzy Grotowski's Laboratory Theatre, 1959–1969: Jerzy Grotowski and Ludwig Flaszen's Texts and Materials and a Text by Eugenio Barba (Fondazione Pontedera Teatro, 2001; second edition, La Casa Usher, 2007) and the collection of Grotowski's texts, Holiday e teatro delle fonti (Holiday and the Theatre of Sources, La Casa Usher, 2006).


1944 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 266-288
Author(s):  
Robert E. Cushman

On February 15, 1943, Wiley B. Rutledge, Jr., a judge of the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, took the seat on the Supreme Court vacated by the resignation in October, 1942, of Mr. Justice Byrnes. There were no other changes in the Court's personnel. Disagreement among the justices abated somewhat. In only a dozen cases of importance did either four or three justices dissent, as against some thirty cases in the last term. The Court overruled two earlier decisions, both recent; and the reversal in each case was made possible by the vote of Mr. Justice Rutledge.A. QUESTIONS OF NATIONAL POWER1. WAR POWER-CIVIL VERSUS MILITARY AUTHORITYWest Coast Curfew Applied to Japanese-American Citizens. In February, 1942, the President issued Executive Order No. 9066, which authorized the creation of military areas from which any or all persons might be excluded and with respect to which the right of persons to enter, remain in, or leave should be subject to such regulations as the military authorities might prescribe. On March 2, the entire West Coast to an average depth of forty miles was set up as Military Area No. 1 by the Commanding General in that area, and the intention was announced to evacuate from it persons of suspected loyalty, alien enemies, and all persons, aliens and citizens alike, of Japanese ancestry.


Significance She addressed two key issues during her trip: tensions in post-coup Myanmar and China’s growing regional footprint. Shortly after she left the region, the United States announced that it would donate unused COVID-19 vaccines abroad, including to South-east Asia. Impacts Washington will tighten its sanctions on the Myanmar military while supporting ASEAN’s five-point plan to ease the country’s crisis. The National Unity Government, a parallel administration to Myanmar’s junta set up by its opponents, will try to attract greater US backing. Manila and Washington may extend negotiations over renewing their Visiting Forces Agreement to prevent the pact expiring in August.


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